CHAPTER III. 1824-30.

Macaulay is called to the bar--Does not make it a serious

profession--Speech before the Anti-Slavery Society--Knight's

Quarterly Magazine--The Edinburgh Review and the Essay on

Milton--Macaulay's personal appearance and mode of

existence--His defects and virtues, likings and antipathies--

Croker Sadler--Zachary Macaulay's circumstances--

Description of the family habits of life in Great Ormond

Street--Macaulay's sisters--Hannah Macaulay--the Judicious

Poet--Macaulay's humour in conversation--His articles in the

Review--His attacks on the Utilitarians and on Southey--

Blackwood's Magazine--Macaulay is made Commissioner of

Bankruptcy--Enters Parliament--Letters from Circuit and

Edinburgh.

MACAULAY was called to the bar in 1826, and joined the Northern circuit.

On the evening that he first appeared at mess, when the company were

retiring for the night, he was observed to be carefully picking out the

longest candle. An old King's Counsel, who noticed that he had a volume

under his arm, remonstrated with him on the danger of reading in bed,

upon which he rejoined with immense rapidity of utterance "I always read

in bed at home; and, if I am not afraid of committing parricide, and

matricide, and fratricide, I can hardly be expected to pay any special

regard to the lives of the bagmen of Leeds." And, so saying, he left

his hearers staring at one another, and marched off to his room, little

knowing that, before many years were out, he would have occasion to

speak much more respectfully of the Leeds bagmen.

Under its social aspect Macaulay heartily enjoyed his legal career.

He made an admirable literary use of the Saturnalia which the Northern

circuit calls by the name of "Grand Night," when personalities of the

most pronounced description are welcomed by all except the object

of them, and forgiven even by him. His hand may be recognised in a

macaronic poem, written in Greek and English, describing the feast at

which Alexander murdered Clitus. The death of the victim is treated with

an exuberance of fantastic drollery, and a song, put into the mouth of

Nearchus, the admiral of the Macedonian fleet, and beginning with the

lines

"When as first I did come back from ploughing the salt water

They paid me off at Salamis, three minae and a quarter,--"

is highly Aristophanic in every sense of the word.

He did not seriously look to the bar as a profession. No persuasion

would induce him to return to his chambers in the evening, according to

the practice then in vogue. After the first year or two of the period

during which he called himself a barrister he gave up even the pretence

of reading law, and spent many more hours under the gallery of the House

of Commons, than in all the Courts together. The person who knew him

best said of him: "Throughout life he never really applied himself to

any pursuit that was against the grain." Nothing is more characteristic

of the man than the contrast between his unconquerable aversion to the

science of jurisprudence at the time when he was ostensibly preparing

himself to be an advocate, and the zest with which, on his voyage to

India, he mastered that science in principle and detail as soon as

his imagination was fired by the prospect of the responsibilities of a

law-giver.

He got no business worth mention, either in London or on circuit.

Zachary Macaulay, who was not a man of the world, did what he could to

make interest with the attorneys, and, as a last resource, proposed

to his son to take a brief in a suit which he himself had instituted

against the journal that had so grossly libelled him. "I am rather

glad," writes Macaulay from York in March 1827, "that I was not in

London, if your advisers thought it right that I should have appeared as

your counsel. Whether it be contrary to professional etiquette I do not

know; but I am sure that it would be shocking to public feeling, and

particularly imprudent against adversaries whose main strength lies in

detecting and exposing indecorum or eccentricity. It would have been

difficult to avoid a quarrel with Sugden, with Wetherell, and with old

Lord Eldon himself. Then the John Bull would have been upon us with

every advantage. The personal part of the consideration it would have

been my duty, and my pleasure and pride also, to overlook; but your

interests must have suffered."

Meanwhile he was busy enough in fields better adapted than the law to

his talents and his temperament. He took a part in a meeting of the

Anti-Slavery Society held at Freemasons' Tavern, on the 25th of June

1824, with the Duke of Gloucester in the chair. The Edinburgh Review

described his speech as "a display of eloquence so signal for rare and

matured excellence that the most practised orator may well admire how it

should have come from one who then for the first time addressed a public

assembly."

Those who know what the annual meeting of a well-organised and

disciplined association is, may imagine the whirlwind of cheers which

greeted the declaration that the hour was at hand when "the peasant of

the Antilles will no longer crawl in listless and trembling dejection

round a plantation from whose fruits he must derive no advantage, and

a hut whose door yields him no protection; but, when his cheerful and

voluntary labour is performed, he will return with the firm step and

erect brow of a British citizen from the field which is his freehold to

the cottage which is his castle."

Surer promise of aptitude for political debate was afforded by the skill

with which the young speaker turned to account the recent trial for

sedition, and death in prison, of Smith, the Demerara missionary; an

event which was fatal to Slavery in the West Indies in the same degree

as the execution of John Brown was its deathblow in the United States.

"When this country has been endangered either by arbitrary power or

popular delusion, truth has still possessed one irresistible organ, and

justice one inviolable tribunal. That organ has been an English press,

and that tribunal an English jury. But in those wretched islands we

see a press more hostile to truth than any censor, and juries more

insensible to justice than any Star Chamber. In those islands alone

is exemplified the full meaning of the most tremendous of the curses

denounced against the apostate Hebrews, 'I will curse your blessings.'

We can prove this assertion out of the mouth of our adversaries. We

remember, and God Almighty forbid that we ever should forget, how,

at the trial of Mr. Smith, hatred regulated every proceeding, was

substituted for every law, and allowed its victim no sanctuary in the

house of mourning, no refuge in the very grave. Against the members of

that court-martial the country has pronounced its verdict. But what is

the line of defence taken by its advocates? It has been solemnly and

repeatedly declared in the House of Commons that a jury composed

of planters would have acted with far more injustice than did this

court;--this court which has never found a single lawyer to stake his

professional character on the legality of its proceedings. The argument

is this. Things have doubtless been done which should not have been

done. The court-martial sat without a jurisdiction; it convicted without

evidence; it condemned to a punishment not warranted by law. But we must

make allowances. We must judge by comparison. 'Mr Smith ought to have

been very thankful that it was no worse. Only think what would have been

his fate if he had been tried by a jury of planters!' Sir, I have always

lived under the protection of the British laws, and therefore I

am unable to imagine what could be worse; but, though I have small

knowledge, I have a large faith; I by no means presume to set any limits

to the possible injustice of a West Indian judicature. And since the

colonists maintain that a jury composed of their own body not only

possibly might, but necessarily must, have acted with more iniquity than

this court-martial, I certainly shall not dispute the assertion, though

I am utterly unable to conceive the mode."

That was probably the happiest half-hour of Zachary Macaulay's life. "My

friend," said Wilberforce, when his turn came to speak, "would doubtless

willingly bear with all the base falsehoods, all the vile calumnies, all

the detestable artifices which have been aimed against him, to render

him the martyr and victim of our cause, for the gratification he has

this day enjoyed in hearing one so dear to him plead such a cause in

such a manner." Keen as his pleasure was, he took it in his own sad

way. From the first moment to the last, he never moved a muscle of his

countenance, but sat with his eyes fixed on a piece of paper, on which

he seemed to be writing with a pencil. While talking with his son that

evening, he referred to what had passed only to remark that it was

ungraceful in so young a man to speak with folded arms in the presence

of royalty.

In 1823 the leading members of the cleverest set of boys who ever were

together at a public school found themselves collected once more at

Cambridge. Of the former staff of the Etonian, Praed, Moultrie, Nelson

Coleridge, and, among others, Mr. Edmond Beales, so well known to our

generation as an ardent politician, were now in residence at King's or

Trinity. Mr. Charles Knight, too enterprising a publisher to let such

a quantity of youthful talent run to waste, started a periodical, which

was largely supported by undergraduates and Bachelors of Arts, among

whom the veterans of the Eton press formed a brilliant, and, as he

vainly hoped, a reliable nucleus of contributors.

Knight's Quarterly Magazine is full of Macaulay, and of Macaulay in the

attractive shape which a great author wears while he is still writing

to please no one but himself. He unfortunately did not at all please his

father. In the first number, besides a great deal of his that is

still worth reading, there were printed under his adopted signature of

Tristram Merton two little poems, the nature of which may be guessed

from Praed's editorial comments. "Tristram Merton, I have a strong

curiosity to know who Rosamond is. But you will not tell me; and, after

all, as far as your verses are concerned, the surname is nowise germane

to the matter. As poor Sheridan said, it is too formal to be registered

in love's calendar." And again: "Tristram, I hope Rosamond and your Fair

Girl of France will not pull caps; but I cannot forbear the temptation

of introducing your Roxana and Statira to an admiring public." The

verses were such as any man would willingly look back to having written

at two and twenty; but their appearance occasioned real misery to

Zachary Macaulay, who indeed disapproved of the whole publication

from beginning to end, with the exception of an article on West Indian

Slavery which his son had inserted with the most filial intention, but

which, it must be allowed, was not quite in keeping with the general

character of the magazine.

July 9, 1823.

My dear Father,--I have seen the two last letters which you have sent to

my mother. They have given me deep pain; but pain without remorse. I am

conscious of no misconduct, and whatever uneasiness I may feel arises

solely from sympathy for your distress.

You seem to imagine that the book is edited, or principally written,

by friends of mine. I thought that you had been aware that the work

is conducted in London, and that my friends and myself are merely

contributors, and form a very small proportion of the contributors.

The manners of almost all of my acquaintances are so utterly alien from

coarseness, and their morals from libertinism, that I feel assured that

no objection of that nature can exist to their writings. As to my own

contributions I can only say that the Roman Story was read to my mother

before it was published, and would have been read to you if you had

happened to be at home. Not one syllable of censure was uttered.

The Essay on the Royal Society of Literature was read to you. I made

the alterations which I conceived that you desired, and submitted

them afterwards to my mother. As to the poetry which you parallel with

Little's, if anything vulgar or licentious has been written by myself,

I am willing to bear the consequences. If anything of that cast has been

written by my friends, I allow that a certain degree of blame attaches

to me for having chosen them at least indiscreetly. If, however, a

bookseller of whom we knew nothing has coupled improper productions with

ours in a work over which we had no control, I cannot plead guilty to

anything more than misfortune; a misfortune in which some of the most

rigidly moral and religious men of my acquaintance have participated in

the present instance.

I am pleading at random for a book which I never saw. I am defending

the works of people most of whose names I never heard. I am therefore

writing under great disadvantages. I write also in great haste. I am

unable even to read over what I have written.

Affectionately yours

T. B. M.

Moved by the father's evident unhappiness, the son promised never to

write again for the obnoxious periodical. The second number was so dull

and decorous that Zachary Macaulay, who felt that, if the magazine

went on through successive quarters reforming its tone in the same

proportion, it would soon be on a level of virtue with the Christian

Observer, withdrew his objection; and the young man wrote regularly till

the short life of the undertaking ended in something very like a quarrel

between the publisher and his contributors. It is not the province of

biography to dilate upon works which are already before the world; and

the results of Macaulay's literary labour during the years 1823 and

1824 have been, perhaps, only too freely reproduced in the volumes which

contain his miscellaneous writings. It is, however, worthy of notice

that among his earlier efforts in literature his own decided favourite

was "the Conversation between Mr. Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton

touching the great Civil War." But an author, who is exempt from vanity,

is inclined to rate his own works rather according as they are free from

faults than as they abound in beauties; and Macaulay's readers will very

generally give the preference to two fragmentary sketches of Roman and

Athenian society which sparkle with life, and humour, and a masculine

vigorous fancy that had not yet learned to obey the rein. Their crude

but genuine merit suggests a regret that he did not in after days enrich

the Edinburgh Review with a couple of articles on classical subjects,

as a sample of that ripened scholarship which produced the Prophecy of

Capys, and the episode relating to the Phalaris controversy in the Essay

on Sir William Temple.

Rothley Temple: October 7, 1824.

My dear Father,--As to Knight's Magazine, I really do not think that,

considering the circumstances under which it is conducted, it can be

much censured. Every magazine must contain a certain quantity of mere

ballast, of no value but as it occupies space. The general tone and

spirit of the work will stand a comparison, in a moral point of view,

with any periodical publication not professedly religious. I will

venture to say that nothing has appeared in it, at least since the first

number, from the pen of any of my friends, which can offend the most

fastidious. Knight is absolutely in our hands, and most desirous to

gratify us all, and me in particular. When I see you in London I

will mention to you a piece of secret history which will show you how

important our connection with this work may possibly become.

Yours affectionately

T. B. M.

The "piece of secret history" above referred to was beyond a doubt the

commencement of Macaulay's connection with the Edinburgh Review. That

famous periodical, which for three and twenty years had shared in and

promoted the rising fortunes of the Liberal cause, had now attained its

height--a height unequalled before or since--of political, social, and

literary power. To have the entry of its columns was to command the

most direct channel for the spread of opinions, and the shortest road

to influence and celebrity. But already the anxious eye of the master

seemed to discern symptoms of decline. Jeffrey, in Lord Cockburn's

phrase, was "growing feverish about new writers." In January 1825 he

says in a letter to a friend in London: "Can you not lay your hands on

some clever young man who would write for us? The original supporters

of the work are getting old, and either too busy or too stupid, and here

the young men are mostly Tories." Overtures had already been made to

Macaulay, and that same year his article on Milton appeared in the

August number.

The effect on the author's reputation was instantaneous. Like Lord

Byron, he awoke one morning and found himself famous. The beauties

of the work were such as all men could recognise, and its very faults

pleased. The redundance of youthful enthusiasm, which he himself

unsparingly condemns in the preface to his collected essays, seemed

graceful enough in the eyes of others, if it were only as a relief from

the perverted ability of that elaborate libel on our great epic poet

which goes by the name of Dr. Johnson's Life of Milton. Murray declared

that it would be worth the copyright of Childe Harold to have Macaulay

on the staff of the Quarterly. The family breakfast table in Bloomsbury

was covered with cards of invitation to dinner from every quarter

of London, and his father groaned in spirit over the conviction that

thenceforward the law would be less to him than ever. A warm admirer

of Robert Hall, Macaulay heard with pride how the great preacher, then

wellnigh worn out with that long disease, his life, was discovered lying

on the floor, employed in learning by aid of grammar and dictionary

enough Italian to enable him to verify the parallel between Milton and

Dante. But the compliment that of all others came most nearly home,--the

only commendation of his literary talent which even in the innermost

domestic circle he was ever known to repeat,--was the sentence with

which Jeffrey acknowledged the receipt of his manuscript: "The more I

think, the less I can conceive where you picked up that style."

Macaulay's outward man was never better described than in two sentences

of Praed's Introduction to Knight's Quarterly Magazine. "There came up a

short manly figure, marvellously upright, with a bad neckcloth, and one

hand in his waistcoat pocket. ["I well remember," writes Sir William

Stirling Maxwell, "the first time I met him,--in 1845 or '46, I

think,--at dinner at the house of his old friend, Sir John Macleod. I

did not know him by sight, and, when he came into the room with two

or three other guests, I supposed that he was announced as General--I

forget what. The party was large, and I was on the other side of the

table, and a good way off, and I was very soon struck by the amazing

number of subjects on which he seemed at home;--politics, home and

foreign,--French literature, and Hebrew poetry;--and I remember

thinking, 'This is a General with a singularly well-stored mind and

badly tied neckcloth.' Till, at last, a remark on the prose of Dryden

led me to conclude that it could be no one but the Great Essayist."] Of

regular beauty he had little to boast; but in faces where there is an

expression of great power, or of great good humour, or both, you do

not regret its absence." This picture, in which every touch is correct,

tells all that there is to be told. He had a massive head, and features

of a powerful and rugged cast, but so constantly lit up by every joyful

and ennobling emotion that it mattered little if, when absolutely

quiescent, his face was rather homely than handsome. While conversing at

table no one thought him otherwise than good-looking; but, when he rose,

he was seen to be short and stout in figure. "At Holland House, the

other day," writes his sister Margaret in September 1831, "Tom met Lady

Lyndhurst for the first time. She said to him: 'Mr. Macaulay, you are so

different to what I expected. I thought you were dark and thin, but you

are fair, and really, Mr. Macaulay, you are fat."' He at all times sat

and stood straight, full, and square; and in this respect Woolner, in

the fine statue at Cambridge, has missed what was undoubtedly the most

marked fact in his personal appearance.

He dressed badly, but not cheaply. His clothes, though ill put on, were

good, and his wardrobe was always enormously overstocked. Later in

life he indulged himself in an apparently inexhaustible succession

of handsome embroidered waistcoats, which he used to regard with

much complacency. He was unhandy to a degree quite unexampled in the

experience of all who knew him. When in the open air he wore perfectly

new dark kid gloves, into the fingers of which he never succeeded in

inserting his own more than half way. After he had sailed for India

there were found in his chambers between fifty and sixty strops, hacked

into strips and splinters, and razors without beginning or end. About

the same period he hurt his hand, and was reduced to send for a barber.

After the operation, he asked what was to pay. "Oh, Sir," said the man,

"whatever you usually give the person who shaves you." "In that case,"

said Macaulay, "I should give you a great gash on each cheek."

During an epoch when, at our principal seats of education, athletic

pursuits are regarded as a leading object of existence rather than as

a means of health and recreation, it requires some boldness to confess

that Macaulay was utterly destitute of bodily accomplishments, and that

he viewed his deficiencies with supreme indifference. He could neither

swim, nor row, nor drive, nor skate, nor shoot. He seldom crossed a

saddle, and never willingly. When in attendance at Windsor as a cabinet

minister he was informed that a horse was at his disposal. "If her

Majesty wishes to see me ride," he said, "she must order out an

elephant." The only exercise in which he can be said to have excelled

was that of threading crowded streets with his eyes fixed upon a book.

He might be seen in such thoroughfares as Oxford Street, and Cheapside,

walking as fast as other people walked, and reading a great deal faster

than anybody else could read. As a pedestrian he was, indeed, above the

average. Till he had passed fifty he thought nothing of going on foot

from the Albany to Clapham, and from Clapham on to Greenwich; and, while

still in the prime of life, he was for ever on his feet indoors as well

as out. "In those days," says his cousin Mrs. Conybeare, "he walked

rapidly up and down a room as he talked. I remember on one occasion,

when he was making a call, he stopped short in his walk in the midst of

a declamation on some subject, and said, 'You have a brick floor here.'

The hostess confessed that it was true, though she hoped that it had

been disguised by double matting and a thick carpet. He said that his

habit of always walking enabled him to tell accurately the material he

was treading on."

His faults were such as give annoyance to those who dislike a man rather

than anxiety to those who love him. Vehemence, over-confidence, the

inability to recognise that there are two sides to a question or

two people in a dialogue, are defects which during youth are perhaps

inseparable from gifts like those with which he was endowed. Moultrie,

speaking of his undergraduate days, tells us that

"To him

There was no pain like silence--no constraint

So dull as unanimity. He breathed

An atmosphere of argument, nor shrank

From making, where he could not find, excuse

For controversial fight."

At Cambridge he would say of himself that, whenever anybody enunciated

a proposition, all possible answers to it rushed into his mind at once;

and it was said of him by others that he had no politics except the

opposite of those held by the person with whom he was talking. To that

charge, at any rate, he did not long continue liable. He left college a

staunch and vehement Whig, eager to maintain against all comers, and

at any moment, that none but Whig opinions had a leg to stand upon.

His cousin George Babington, a rising surgeon, with whom at one time

he lived in the closest intimacy, was always ready to take up the Tory

cudgels. The two friends "would walk up and down the room, crossing

each other for hours, shouting one another down with a continuous

simultaneous storm of words, until George at length yielded to arguments

and lungs combined. Never, so far as I remember, was there any loss of

temper. It was a fair, good-humoured battle in not very mannerly lists."

Even as a very young man nine people out of ten liked nothing better

than to listen to him, which was fortunate; because in his early days

he had scanty respect of persons, either as regarded the choice of his

topics, or the quantity of his words. But with his excellent temper,

and entire absence of conceit, he soon began to learn consideration for

others in small things as well as in great. By the time he was fairly

launched in London he was agreeable in company, as well as forcible and

amusing. Wilberforce speaks of his "unruffled good-humour." Sir Robert

Inglis, a good observer with ample opportunity of forming a judgment,

pronounced that he conversed and did not dictate, and that he was loud

but never overbearing. As far back as the year 1826 Crabb Robinson gave

a very favourable account of his demeanour in society, which deserves

credence as the testimony of one who liked his share of talk, and was

not willing to be put in the background for anybody. "I went to James

Stephen, and drove with him to his house at Hendon. A dinner party.

I had a most interesting companion in young Macaulay, one of the most

promising of the rising generation I have seen for a long time. He has

a good face,--not the delicate features of a man of genius and

sensibility, but the strong lines and well-knit limbs of a man sturdy in

body and mind. Very eloquent and cheerful. Overflowing with words, and

not poor in thought. Liberal in opinion, but no radical. He seems a

correct as well as a full man. He showed a minute knowledge of subjects

not introduced by himself."

So loyal and sincere was Macaulay's nature that he was unwilling to live

upon terms of even apparent intimacy with people whom he did not like,

or could not esteem; and, as far as civility allowed, he avoided their

advances, and especially their hospitality. He did not choose, he said,

to eat salt with a man for whom he could not say a good word in all

companies. He was true throughout life to those who had once acquired

his regard and respect. Moultrie says of him

"His heart was pure and simple as a child's

Unbreathed on by the world: in friendship warm,

Confiding, generous, constant; and, though now

He ranks among the great ones of the earth

And hath achieved such glory as will last

To future generations, he, I think,

Would sup on oysters with as right good will

In this poor home of mine as e'er he did

On Petty Cury's classical first floor

Some twenty years ago."

He loved to place his purse, his influence, and his talents at the

disposal of a friend; and anyone whom he called by that name he judged

with indulgence, and trusted with a faith that would endure almost any

strain. If his confidence proved to have been egregiously misplaced,

which he was always the last to see, he did not resort to remonstrance

or recrimination. His course under such circumstances he described in a

couplet from an old French comedy:

"Le bruit est pour le fat, la plainte pour le sot;

L'honnete homme trompe s'eloigne et ne dit mot.

["La Coquette corrigee. Comedie par Mr. Delanoue, 1756." In his journal

of February 15, 1851, after quoting the couplet, Macaulay adds: "Odd

that two lines of a damned play, and, it should seem, a justly damned

play, should have lived near a century and have become proverbial."]

He was never known to take part in any family quarrel, or personal

broil, of any description whatsoever. His conduct in this respect was

the result of self-discipline, and did not proceed from any want of

sensibility. "He is very sensitive," said his sister Margaret, "and

remembers long, as well as feels deeply, anything in the form of

slight." Indeed, at college his friends used to tell him that his

leading qualities were "generosity and vindictiveness." Courage he

certainly did not lack. During the years when his spirit was high, and

his pen cut deep, and when the habits of society were different from

what they are at present, more than one adversary displayed symptoms of

a desire to meet him elsewhere than on paper. On these occasions, while

showing consideration for his opponent, he evinced a quiet but very

decided sense of what was due to himself, which commanded the respect of

all who were implicated, and brought difficulties that might have been

grave to an honourable and satisfactory issue.

He reserved his pugnacity for quarrels undertaken on public grounds,

and fought out with the world looking on as umpire. In the lists of

criticism and of debate it cannot be denied that, as a young man, he

sometimes deserved the praise which Dr. Johnson pronounced upon a good

hater. He had no mercy for bad writers, and notably for bad poets,

unless they were in want of money; in which case he became within his

means, the most open-handed of patrons. He was too apt to undervalue

both the heart and the head of those who desired to maintain the old

system of civil and religious exclusion, and who grudged political

power to their fellow-countrymen, or at any rate to those of their

fellow-countrymen whom he was himself prepared to enfranchise.

Independent, frank, and proud almost to a fault, he detested the

whole race of jobbers and time-servers, parasites and scandal-mongers,

led-captains, led-authors, and led-orators. Some of his antipathies have

stamped themselves indelibly upon literary history. He attributed to the

Right Honourable John Wilson Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty

during the twenty years preceding 1830, qualities which excited his

disapprobation beyond control, and possibly beyond measure. His judgment

has been confirmed by the public voice, which identifies Croker with the

character of Rigby in Mr. Disraeli's Coningsby.

Macaulay was the more formidable as an opponent because he could be

angry without losing his command of the situation. His first onset was

terrific; but in the fiercest excitement of the melee he knew when to

call a halt. A certain member of Parliament named Michael Thomas Sadler

had fallen foul of Malthus, and very foul indeed of Macaulay, who in

two short and telling articles took revenge enough for both. [Macaulay

writes to Mr. Napier in February 1831: "People here think that I

have answered Sadler completely. Empson tells me that Malthus is well

pleased, which is a good sign. As to Blackwood's trash I could not get

through it. It bore the same relation to Sadler's pamphlet that a bad

hash bears to a bad joint."] He writes on this subject to Mr. Macvey

Napier, who towards the close of 1829 had succeeded Jeffrey in the

editorship of the Edinburgh Review: "The position which we have now

taken up is absolutely impregnable, and, if we were to quit it, though

we might win a more splendid victory, we should expose ourselves to

some risk. My rule in controversy has always been that to which the

Lacedaemonians adhered in war: never to break the ranks for the purpose

of pursuing a beaten enemy." He had, indeed, seldom occasion to strike

twice. Where he set his mark, there was no need of a second impression.

The unduly severe fate of those who crossed his path during the years

when his blood was hot teaches a serious lesson on the responsibilities

of genius. Croker, and Sadler, and poor Robert Montgomery, and the other

less eminent objects of his wrath, appear likely to enjoy just so much

notoriety, and of such a nature, as he has thought fit to deal out to

them in his pages; and it is possible that even Lord Ellenborough may be

better known to our grand-children by Macaulay's oration on the gates

of Somnauth than by the noise of his own deeds, or the echo of his own

eloquence.

When Macaulay went to college he was justified in regarding himself as

one who would not have to work for his bread. His father, who believed

himself to be already worth a hundred thousand pounds, had statedly

declared to the young man his intention of making him, in a modest

way, an eldest son; and had informed him that, by doing his duty at the

university, he would earn the privilege of shaping his career at choice.

In 1818 the family removed to London, and set up an establishment on a

scale suited to their improved circumstances in Cadogan Place, which, in

everything except proximity to Bond Street, was then hardly less rural

than Clapham. But the prosperity of the house of Macaulay and Babington

was short-lived. The senior member of the firm gave his whole heart, and

five-sixths of his time, to objects unconnected with his business; and

he had selected a partner who did not possess the qualities necessary

to compensate for his own deficiencies. In 1819 the first indications

of possible disaster begin to show themselves in the letters to and from

Cambridge; while waiting for a fellowship Macaulay was glad to make

a hundred guineas by taking pupils; and, as time went on, it became

evident that he was to be an eldest son only in the sense that,

throughout the coming years of difficulty and distress, his brothers and

sisters would depend mainly upon him for comfort, guidance, and support.

He acknowledged the claim cheerfully, lovingly, and, indeed, almost

unconsciously. It was not in his disposition to murmur over what was

inevitable, or to plume himself upon doing what was right. He quietly

took up the burden which his father was unable to bear; and, before many

years had elapsed, the fortunes of all for whose welfare he considered

himself responsible were abundantly assured. In the course of the

efforts which he expended on the accomplishment of this result he

unlearned the very notion of framing his method of life with a view to

his own pleasure; and such was his high and simple nature, that it may

well be doubted whether it ever crossed his mind that to live wholly for

others was a sacrifice at all.

He resided with his father in Cadogan Place, and accompanied him when,

under the pressure of pecuniary circumstances, he removed to a less

fashionable quarter of the town. In 1823 the family settled in 50 Great

Ormond Street, which runs east and west for some three hundred yards

through the region bounded by the British Museum, the Foundling

Hospital, and Gray's Inn Road. It was a large rambling house, at the

corner of Powis Place, and was said to have been the residence of Lord

Chancellor Thurlow at the time when the Great Seal was stolen from his

custody. It now forms the east wing of an Homoeopathic hospital.

Here the Macaulays remained till 1831. "Those were to me," says Lady

Trevelyan, "years of intense happiness. There might be money troubles,

but they did not touch us. Our lives were passed after a fashion which

would seem indeed strange to the present generation. My father, ever

more and more engrossed in one object, gradually gave up all society;

and my mother never could endure it. We had friends, of course,

with whom we stayed out for months together; and we dined with the

Wilberforces, the Buxtons, Sir Robert Inglis, and others; but what is

now meant by 'society' was utterly unknown to us.

"In the morning there was some pretence of work and study. In the

afternoon your uncle always took my sister Margaret and myself a long

walk. We traversed every part of the City, Islington, Clerkenwell,

and the Parks, returning just in time for a six o'clock dinner. What

anecdotes he used to pour out about every street, and square, and court,

and alley! There are many places I never pass without 'the tender grace

of a day that is dead' coming back to me. Then, after dinner, he always

walked up and down the drawing-room between us chatting till tea-time.

Our noisy mirth, his wretched puns, so many a minute, so many an hour!

Then we sang, none of us having any voices, and he, if possible, least

of all; but still the old nursery songs were set to music, and chanted.

My father, sitting at his own table, used to look up occasionally, and

push back his spectacles, and, I dare say, wonder in his heart how

we could so waste our time. After tea the book then in reading was

produced. Your uncle very seldom read aloud himself of an evening, but

walked about listening, and commenting, and drinking water.

"The Sundays were in some respects trying days to him. My father's habit

was to read a long sermon to us all in the afternoon, and again after

evening service another long sermon was read at prayer-time to the

servants. Our doors were open to sons of relations or friends; and

cousins who were medical students, or clerks in merchants' houses,

came in regularly to partake of our Sunday dinner and sermons. Sunday

walking, for walking's sake, was never allowed; and even going to a

distant church was discouraged. When in Cadogan Place, we always crossed

the Five Fields, where Belgrave Square now stands, to hear Dr. Thorpe at

the Lock Chapel, and bring him home to dine with us. From Great Ormond

Street, we attended St. John's Chapel in Bedford Row, then served by

Daniel Wilson, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta. He was succeeded in 1826

by the Rev. Baptist Noel. Your uncle generally went to church with us in

the morning, and latterly formed the habit of walking out of town, alone

or with a friend, in the after part of the day. I never heard that my

father took any notice of this; and, indeed, in the interior of his own

family, he never attempted in the smallest degree to check his son in

his mode of life, or in the expression of his opinions.

"I believe that breakfast was the pleasantest part of the day to my

father. His spirits were then at their best, and he was most disposed to

general conversation. He delighted in discussing the newspaper with his

son, and lingered over the table long after the meal was finished. On

this account he felt it extremely when, in the year 1829, your uncle

went to live in chambers, and often said to my mother that the change

had taken the brightness out of his day. Though your uncle generally

dined with us, yet my father was tired by the evening, so that the

breakfast hour was a grievous loss to him, as indeed it was to us all.

Truly he was to old and young alike the sunshine of our home; and I

believe that no one, who did not know him there, ever knew him in his

most brilliant, witty, and fertile vein."

That home was never more cheerful than during the eight years which

followed the close of Macaulay's college life. There had been much quiet

happiness at Clapham, and much in Cadogan Place; but it was round the

house in Great Ormond Street that the dearest associations gathered.

More than forty years afterwards, when Lady Trevelyan was dying, she

had herself driven to the spot, as the last drive she ever took, and sat

silent in her carriage for many minutes with her eyes fixed upon those

well-known walls.

[In August 1857, Macaulay notes in his diary: "I sent the carriage home,

and walked to the Museum. Passing through Great Ormond Street I saw a

bill upon No. 50. I knocked, was let in, and went over the house with

a strange mixture of feelings. It is more than twenty-six years since

I was in it. The dining-room, and the adjoining room, in which I once

slept, are scarcely changed--the same colouring on the wall, but more

dingy. My father's study much the same;--the drawing-rooms too, except

the papering. My bedroom just what it was. My mother's bedroom. I had

never been in it since her death. I went away sad."]

While warmly attached to all his nearest relations, Macaulay lived in

the closest and most frequent companionship with his sisters Hannah and

Margaret, younger than himself by ten and twelve years respectively.

His affection for these two, deep and enduring as it was, had in it no

element of blindness or infatuation. Even in the privacy of a diary,

or the confidence of the most familiar correspondence, Macaulay, when

writing about those whom he loved, was never tempted to indulge in fond

exaggeration of their merits. Margaret, as will be seen in the course

of this narrative, died young, leaving a memory of outward graces, and

sweet and noble mental qualities, which is treasured by all among whom

her short existence was passed. As regards the other sister, there are

many alive who knew her for what she was; and, for those who did not

know her, if this book proves how much of her brother's heart she had,

and how well it was worth having, her children will feel that they have

repaid their debt even to her.

Education in the Macaulay family was not on system. Of what are

ordinarily called accomplishments the daughters had but few, and Hannah

fewest of any; but, ever since she could remember anything, she had

enjoyed the run of a good standard library, and had been allowed to read

at her own time, and according to her own fancy. There were two traits

in her nature which are seldom united in the same person: a vivid

practical interest in the realities which surrounded her, joined with

the power of passing at will into a world of literature and romance

in which she found herself entirely at home. The feeling with which

Macaulay and his sister regarded books differed from that of other

people in kind rather than in degree. When they were discoursing

together about a work of history or biography, a bystander would have

supposed that they had lived in the times of which the author treated,

and had a personal acquaintance with every human being who was mentioned

in his pages. Pepys, Addison, Horace Walpole, Dr. Johnson, Madame de

Genlis, the Duc de St. Simon, and the several societies in which those

worthies moved, excited in their minds precisely the same sort of

concern, and gave matter for discussions of exactly the same type, as

most people bestow upon the proceedings of their own contemporaries. The

past was to them as the present, and the fictitious as the actual. The

older novels, which had been the food of their early years, had become

part of themselves to such an extent that, in speaking to each other,

they frequently employed sentences from dialogues in those novels to

express the idea, or even the business, of the moment. On matters of

the street or of the household they would use the very language of Mrs.

Elton and Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Woodhouse, Mr. Collins, and John Thorpe, and

the other inimitable actors on Jane Austen's unpretending stage: while

they would debate the love affairs and the social relations of their own

circle in a series of quotations from Sir Charles Grandison or Evelina.

The effect was at times nothing less than bewildering. When Lady

Trevelyan married, her husband, whose reading had lain anywhere rather

than among the circulating libraries, used at first to wonder who the

extraordinary people could be with whom his wife and his brother-in-law

appeared to have lived. This style of thought and conversation had for

young minds a singular and a not unhealthy fascination. Lady Trevelyan's

children were brought up among books, (to use the homely simile of

an American author), as a stable-boy among horses. The shelves of the

library, instead of frowning on us as we played and talked, seemed alive

with kindly and familiar faces. But death came, and came again, and then

all was changed, and changed as in an instant. There were many favourite

volumes out of which the spirit seemed to vanish at once and for ever.

We endeavoured unsuccessfully to revive by our own efforts the amusement

which we had been taught to find in the faded flatteries and absurdities

that passed between Miss Seward and her admirers, or to retrace for

ourselves the complications of female jealousy which played round

Cowper's tea-table at Olney. We awoke to the discovery that the charm

was not in us, nor altogether in the books themselves. The talisman,

which endowed with life and meaning all that it touched, had passed away

from among us, leaving recollections which are our most cherished, as

they must ever be our proudest, possession.

Macaulay thought it probable that he could re-write Sir Charles

Grandison from memory, and certainly he might have done so with his

sister's help. But his intimate acquaintance with a work was no proof of

its merit. "There was a certain prolific author," says Lady Trevelyan,

"named Mrs. Meeke, whose romances he all but knew by heart; though

he quite agreed in my criticism that they were one just like another,

turning on the fortunes of some young man in a very low rank of life who

eventually proves to be the son of a Duke. Then there was a set of books

by a Mrs. Kitty Cuthbertson, most silly though readable productions, the

nature of which may be guessed from their titles:--'Santo Sebastiano,

or the Young Protector,' 'The Forest of Montalbano,' 'The Romance of

the Pyrenees,' and 'Adelaide, or the Countercharm.' I remember how, when

'Santo Sebastiano' was sold by auction in India, he and Miss Eden bid

against each other till he secured it at a fabulous price; and I possess

it still."

As an indication of the thoroughness with which this literary

treasure has been studied, there appears on the last page an elaborate

computation of the number of fainting-fits that occur in the course of

the five volumes.

Julia de Clifford..... 11

Lady Delamore....... 4

Lady Theodosia....... 4

Lord Glenbrook...... 2

Lord Delamore...... 2

Lady Enderfield...... 1

Lord Ashgrove....... 1

Lord St. Orville..... 1

Henry Mildmay....... 1

A single passage, selected for no other reason than because it is the

shortest, will serve as a specimen of these catastrophes "One of the

sweetest smiles that ever animated the face of mortal now diffused

itself over the countenance of Lord St. Orville, as he fell at the feet

of Julia in a death-like swoon."

The fun that went on in Great Ormond Street was of a jovial, and

sometimes uproarious, description. Even when the family was by itself,

the school-room and the drawing-room were full of young people; and

friends and cousins flocked in numbers to a resort where so much

merriment was perpetually on foot. There were seasons during the school

holidays when the house overflowed with noise and frolic from morning to

night; and Macaulay, who at any period of his life could literally spend

whole days in playing with children, was master of the innocent revels.

Games of hide-and-seek, that lasted for hours, with shouting and the

blowing of horns up and down the stairs and through every room, were

varied by ballads, which, like the Scalds of old, he composed during the

act of recitation, while the others struck in with the chorus. He had no

notion whatever of music, but an infallible ear for rhythm. His knack of

improvisation he at all times exercised freely. The verses which he thus

produced, and which he invariably attributed to an anonymous author whom

he styled "the Judicious Poet," were exclusively for home consumption.

Some of these effusions illustrate a sentiment in his disposition

which was among the most decided, and the most frequently and loudly

expressed. Macaulay was only too easily bored, and those whom he

considered fools he by no means suffered gladly. He once amused his

sisters by pouring out whole Iliads of extempore doggrel upon the head

of an unfortunate country squire of their acquaintance, who had a habit

of detaining people by the button, and who was especially addicted to

the society of the higher order of clergy

"His Grace Archbishop Manners Sutton

Could not keep on a single button.

As for Right Reverend John of Chester,

His waistcoats open at the breast are.

Our friend* has filled a mighty trunk

With trophies torn from Doctor Monk

And he has really tattered foully

The vestments of Archbishop Howley

No button could I late discern on

The garments of Archbishop Vernon,

And never had his fingers mercy

Upon the garb of Bishop Percy.

The buttons fly from Bishop Ryder

Like corks that spring from bottled cyder,--"

[*The name of this gentleman has been concealed, as not being

sufficiently known by all to give point, but well enough remembered by

some to give pain.]

and so on, throughout the entire bench, until, after a good half-hour

of hearty and spontaneous nonsense, the girls would go laughing back to

their Italian and their drawing-boards.

He did not play upon words as a habit, nor did he interlard his talk

with far-fetched or overstrained witticisms. His humour, like his

rhetoric, was full of force and substance, and arose naturally from the

complexion of the conversation or the circumstance of the moment. But

when alone with his sisters, and, in after years, with his nieces,

he was fond of setting himself deliberately to manufacture conceits

resembling those on the heroes of the Trojan War which have been thought

worthy of publication in the collected works of Swift. When walking in

London he would undertake to give some droll turn to the name of every

shopkeeper in the street, and, when travelling, to the name of every

station along the line. At home he would run through the countries of

Europe, the States of the Union, the chief cities of our Indian Empire,

the provinces of France, the Prime Ministers of England, or the chief

writers and artists of any given century; striking off puns, admirable,

endurable, and execrable, but all irresistibly laughable, which followed

each other in showers like sparks from flint. Capping verses was a game

of which he never tired. "In the spring of 1829," says his cousin Mrs.

Conybeare, "we were staying in Ormond Street. My chief recollection of

your uncle during that visit is on the evenings when we capped verses.

All the family were quick at it, but his astounding memory made him

supereminent. When the time came for him to be off to bed at his

chambers, he would rush out of the room after uttering some long-sought

line, and would be pursued to the top of the stairs by one of the others

who had contrived to recall a verse which served the purpose, in order

that he might not leave the house victorious; but he, with the hall-door

open in his hand, would shriek back a crowning effort, and go off

triumphant."

Nothing of all this can be traced in his letters before the year 1830.

Up to that period he corresponded regularly with no one but his father,

between whom and himself there existed a strong regard, but scanty

sympathy or similarity of pursuits. It was not until he poured out his

mind almost daily to those who approached him more nearly in age, and in

tastes, that the lighter side of his nature began to display itself on

paper. Most of what he addressed to his parents between the time when he

left Cambridge, and the time when he entered the House of Commons, may

be characterised as belonging to the type of duty-letters, treating of

politics, legal gossip, personal adventures, and domestic incidents,

with some reticence and little warmth or ease of expression, The

periodical insertion on the son's part of anecdotes and observations

bearing upon the question of Slavery reminds the reader of those

presents of tall recruits with which, at judiciously chosen intervals,

Frederic the Great used to conciliate his terrible father. As between

the Macaulays, these little filial attentions acquire a certain

gracefulness from the fact that, in the circumstances of the

family, they could be prompted by no other motive than a dutiful and

disinterested affection.

It must not be supposed,--no one who examines the dates of his

successive essays will for a moment suppose,--that his attention was

distracted, or his energy dissipated, by trifles. Besides the finished

study of Machiavelli, and the masterly sketch of our great civil

troubles known as the article on Hallam's Constitutional History, he

produced much which his mature judgment would willingly have allowed to

die, but which had plenty of life in it when it first appeared between

the blue and yellow covers. His most formidable enterprise, during the

five earliest years of his connection with the great Review, was that

passage of arms against the champions of the Utilitarian philosophy in

which he touched the mighty shields of James Mill and Jeremy Bentham,

and rode slashing to right and left through the ranks of their less

distinguished followers. Indeed, while he sincerely admired the chiefs

of the school, he had a young man's prejudice against their disciples,

many of whom he regarded as "persons who, having read little or nothing,

are delighted to be rescued from the sense of their own inferiority by

some teacher who assures them that the studies which they have neglected

are of no value, puts five or six phrases into their mouths, lends them

an odd number of the Westminster Review, and in a month transforms them

into philosophers." It must be allowed that there was some colour for

his opinion. The Benthamite training may have stimulated the finer

intellects, (and they were not few,) which came within its influence;

but it is impossible to conceive anything more dreary than must have

been the condition of a shallow mind, with a native predisposition to

sciolism, after its owner had joined a society "composed of young men

agreeing in fundamental principles, acknowledging Utility as their

standard in ethics and politics," "meeting once a fortnight to read

essays and discuss questions conformably to the premises thus agreed

on," and "expecting the regeneration of mankind, not from any direct

action on the sentiments of unselfish benevolence and love of justice,

but from the effect of educated intellect enlightening the selfish

feelings." John Stuart Mill, with that candour which is the rarest of

his great qualities, gave a generous and authoritative testimony to the

merit of these attacks upon his father, and his father's creed, which

Macaulay himself lived to wish that he had left unwritten.

["The author has been strongly urged to insert three papers on the

Utilitarian Philosophy, which, when they first appeared, attracted some

notice. * * * He has, however, determined to omit these papers, not

because he is disposed to retract a single doctrine which they contain,

but because he is unwilling to offer what might be regarded as an

affront to the memory of one from whose opinions he still widely

dissents, but to whose talents and virtues he admits that he formerly

did not do justice. * * It ought to be known that Mr. Mill had the

generosity, not only to forgive, but to forget the unbecoming acrimony

with which he had been assailed, and was, when his valuable life

closed, on terms of cordial friendship with his assailant."--Preface to

Macaulay's Collected Essays.]

He was already famous enough to have incurred the inevitable penalty

of success in the shape of the pronounced hostility of Blackwood's

Magazine. The feelings which the leading contributors to that periodical

habitually entertained towards a young and promising writer were in

his case sharpened by political partisanship; and the just and measured

severity which he infused into his criticism on Southey's "Colloquies

of Society" brought down upon him the bludgeon to whose strokes poetic

tradition has attributed the death of Keats. Macaulay was made of

harder stuff, and gave little heed to a string of unsavoury invectives

compounded out of such epithets as "ugly," "splay-footed," and

"shapeless;" such phrases as "stuff and nonsense," "malignant trash,"

"impertinent puppy," and "audacity of impudence;" and other samples from

the polemical vocabulary of the personage who, by the irony of fate,

filled the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh. The substance of

Professor Wilson's attacks consisted in little more than the reiteration

of that charge of intellectual juvenility, which never fails to

be employed as the last resource against a man whose abilities are

undoubted, and whose character is above detraction.

"North. He's a clever lad, James.

"Shepherd. Evidently; and a clever lad he'll remain, depend ye upon

that, a' the days of his life. A clever lad thirty years auld and some

odds is to ma mind the maist melancholy sight in nature. Only think of a

clever lad o' three-score-and-ten, on his deathbed, wha can look back on

nae greater achievement than having aince, or aiblins ten times, abused

Mr. Southey in the Embro' Review."

The prophecies of jealousy seldom come true. Southey's book died before

its author, with the exception of the passages extracted by Macaulay,

which have been reproduced in his essay a hundred times, and more, for

once that they were printed in the volumes from which he selected them

for his animadversion.

The chambers in which he ought to have been spending his days, and did

actually spend his nights between the years 1829 and 1834, were within

five minutes' walk of the house in Great Ormond Street. The building of

which those chambers formed a part,--8 South Square, Gray's Inn,--has

since been pulled down to make room for an extension of the Library; a

purpose which, in Macaulay's eyes, would amply compensate for the loss

of such associations as might otherwise have attached themselves to the

locality. His Trinity fellowship brought him in nearly three hundred

pounds annually, and the Edinburgh Review nearly two hundred. In January

1828, during the interregnum that separated the resignation of

Lord Goderich and the acceptance of the Premiership by the Duke of

Wellington, Lord Lyndhurst made him a Commissioner of Bankruptcy; a rare

piece of luck at a time when, as Lord Cockburn tells us, "a youth of a

Tory family, who was discovered to have a leaning towards the doctrines

of the opposition, was considered as a lost son." "The Commission is

welcome," Macaulay writes to his father, "and I am particularly glad

that it has been given at a time when there is no ministry, and when the

acceptance of it implies no political obligation. To Lord Lyndhurst I of

course feel personal gratitude, and I shall always take care how I speak

of him."

The emoluments of the office made up his income, for the three or four

years during which he held it, to about nine hundred pounds per annum.

His means were more than sufficient for his wants, but too small, and

far too precarious, for the furtherance of the political aspirations

which now were uppermost in his mind. "Public affairs," writes Lady

Trevelyan, "were become intensely interesting to him. Canning's

accession to power, then his death, the repeal of the Test Act, the

Emancipation of the Catholics, all in their turn filled his heart and

soul. He himself longed to be taking his part in Parliament, but with a

very hopeless longing.

"In February 1830 I was staying at Mr. Wilberforce's at Highwood Hill

when I got a letter from your uncle, enclosing one from Lord Lansdowne,

who told him that he had been much struck by the articles on Mill, and

that he wished to be the means of first introducing their author to

public life by proposing to him to stand for the vacant seat at Calne.

Lord Lansdowne expressly added that it was your uncle's high moral and

private character which had determined him to make the offer, and that

he wished in no respect to influence his votes, but to leave him quite

at liberty to act according to his conscience. I remember flying into

Mr. Wilberforce's study, and, absolutely speechless, putting the letter

into his hands. He read it with much emotion, and returned it to me,

saying 'Your father has had great trials, obloquy, bad health, many

anxieties. One must feel as if Tom were given him for a recompense.'

He was silent for a moment, and then his mobile face lighted up, and he

clapped his hand to his ear, and cried: 'Ah! I hear that shout again.

Hear! Hear! What a life it was!'"

And so, on the eve of the most momentous conflict that ever was fought

out by speech and vote within the walls of a senate-house, the young

recruit went gaily to his post in the ranks of that party whose coming

fortunes he was prepared loyally to follow, and the history of whose

past he was destined eloquently, and perhaps imperishably, to record.

York: April 2, 1826.

My dear Father,--I am sorry that I have been unable to avail myself of

the letters of introduction which you forwarded to me. Since I received

them I have been confined to the house with a cold; and, now that I am

pretty well recovered, I must take my departure for Pontefract. But, if

it had been otherwise, I could not have presented these recommendations.

Letters of this sort may be of great service to a barrister; but the

barrister himself must not be the bearer of them. On this subject the

rule is most strict, at least on our circuit. The hugging of the Bar,

like the Simony of the Church, must be altogether carried on by the

intervention of third persons. We are sensible of our dependence on

the attorneys, and proportioned to that sense of dependence is our

affectation of superiority. Even to take a meal with an attorney is a

high misdemeanour. One of the most eminent men among us brought

himself into a serious scrape by doing so. But to carry a letter of

introduction, to wait in the outer room while it is being read, to be

then ushered into the presence, to receive courtesies which can only be

considered as the condescensions of a patron, to return courtesies which

are little else than the blessings of a beggar, would be an infinitely

more terrible violation of our professional code. Every barrister to

whom I have applied for advice has most earnestly exhorted me on no

account whatever to present the letters myself. I should perhaps add

that my advisers have been persons who cannot by any possibility feel

jealous of me.

In default of anything better I will eke out my paper with some lines

which I made in bed last night,--an inscription for a picture of

Voltaire.

If thou would'st view one more than man and less,

Made up of mean and great, of foul and fair,

Stop here; and weep and laugh, and curse and bless,

And spurn and worship; for thou seest Voltaire.

That flashing eye blasted the conqueror's spear,

The monarch's sceptre, and the Jesuit's beads

And every wrinkle in that haggard sneer

Hath been the grave of Dynasties and Creeds.

In very wantonness of childish mirth

He puffed Bastilles, and thrones, and shrines away,

Insulted Heaven, and liberated earth.

Was it for good or evil? Who shall say?

Ever affectionately yours

T. B. M.

York: July 21, 1826.

My dear Father,--The other day, as I was changing my neck-cloth which my

wig had disfigured, my good landlady knocked at the door of my bedroom,

and told me that Mr. Smith wished to see me, and was in my room below.

Of all names by which men are called there is none which conveys a less

determinate idea to the mind than that of Smith. Was he on the circuit?

For I do not know half the names of my companions. Was he a special

messenger from London? Was he a York attorney coming to be preyed upon,

or a beggar coming to prey upon me, a barber to solicit the dressing

of my wig, or a collector for the Jews' Society? Down I went, and to my

utter amazement beheld the Smith of Smiths, Sydney Smith, alias Peter

Plymley. I had forgotten his very existence till I discerned the queer

contrast between his black coat and his snow-white head, and the equally

curious contrast between the clerical amplitude of his person, and the

most unclerical wit, whim, and petulance of his eye. I shook hands with

him very heartily; and on the Catholic question we immediately fell,

regretted Evans, triumphed over Lord George Beresford, and abused

the Bishops. [These allusions refer to the general election which had

recently taken place.] He then very kindly urged me to spend the time

between the close of the Assizes and the commencement of the Sessions

at his house; and was so hospitably pressing that I at last agreed to go

thither on Saturday afternoon. He is to drive me over again into York

on Monday morning. I am very well pleased at having this opportunity

of becoming better acquainted with a man who, in spite of innumerable

affectations and oddities, is certainly one of the wittiest and most

original writers of our times.

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. M.

Bradford: July 26, 1826.

My dear Father,--On Saturday I went to Sydney Smith's. His parish lies

three or four miles out of any frequented road. He is, however, most

pleasantly situated. "Fifteen years ago," said he to me as I alighted

at the gate of his shrubbery, "I was taken up in Piccadilly and set down

here. There was no house, and no garden; nothing but a bare field." One

service this eccentric divine has certainly rendered to the Church.

He has built the very neatest, most commodious, and most appropriate

rectory that I ever saw. All its decorations are in a peculiarly

clerical style; grave, simple, and gothic. The bed-chambers are

excellent, and excellently fitted up; the sitting-rooms handsome; and

the grounds sufficiently pretty. Tindal and Parke, (not the judge

of course,) two of the best lawyers, best scholars, and best men in

England, were there. We passed an extremely pleasant evening, had a very

good dinner, and many amusing anecdotes.

After breakfast the next morning I walked to church with Sydney Smith.

The edifice is not at all in keeping with the rectory. It is a miserable

little hovel with a wooden belfry. It was, however, well filled, and

with decent people, who seemed to take very much to their pastor. I

understand that he is a very respectable apothecary; and most liberal

of his skill, his medicine, his soul, and his wine, among the sick.

He preached a very queer sermon--the former half too familiar and the

latter half too florid, but not without some ingenuity of thought and

expression.

Sydney Smith brought me to York on Monday morning, in time for the

stage-coach which runs to Skipton. We parted with many assurances of

goodwill. I have really taken a great liking to him. He is full of wit,

humour, and shrewdness. He is not one of those show-talkers who reserve

all their good things for special occasions. It seems to be his greatest

luxury to keep his wife and daughters laughing for two or three hours

every day. His notions of law, government, and trade are surprisingly

clear and just. His misfortune is to have chosen a profession at once

above him and below him. Zeal would have made him a prodigy; formality

and bigotry would have made him a bishop; but he could neither rise to

the duties of his order, nor stoop to its degradations.

He praised my articles in the Edinburgh Review with a warmth which I am

willing to believe sincere, because he qualified his compliments with

several very sensible cautions. My great danger, he said, was that

of taking a tone of too much asperity and contempt in controversy. I

believe that he is right, and I shall try to mend.

Ever affectionately yours

T. B. M.

Lancaster: September 1, 1827.

My dear Father,--Thank Hannah from me for her pleasant letter. I would

answer it if I had anything equally amusing to say in return; but here

we have no news, except what comes from London, and is as stale as

inland fish before it reaches us. We have circuit anecdotes to be sure;

and perhaps you will be pleased to hear that Brougham has been rising

through the whole of this struggle. At York Pollock decidedly took the

lead. At Durham Brougham overtook him, passed him at Newcastle, and got

immensely ahead of him at Carlisle and Appleby, which, to be sure, are

the places where his own connections lie. We have not been here quite

long enough to determine how he will succeed with the Lancastrians.

This has always hitherto been his least favourable place. He appears to

improve in industry and prudence. He learns his story more thoroughly,

and tells it more clearly, than formerly. If he continues to manage

causes as well as he has done of late he must rise to the summit of the

profession. I cannot say quite so much for his temper, which this close

and constant rivalry does not improve. He squabbles with Pollock more

than, in generosity or policy, he ought to do. I have heard several of

our younger men wondering that he does not show more magnanimity. He

yawns while Pollock is speaking; a sign of weariness which, in their

present relation to each other, he would do well to suppress. He has

said some very good, but very bitter, things. There was a case of a

lead-mine. Pollock was for the proprietors, and complained bitterly of

the encroachments which Brougham's clients had made upon this property,

which he represented as of immense value. Brougham said that the

estimate which his learned friend formed of the property was vastly

exaggerated, but that it was no wonder that a person who found it so

easy to get gold for his lead should appreciate that heavy metal

so highly. The other day Pollock laid down a point of law rather

dogmatically. "Mr. Pollock," said Brougham, "perhaps, before you rule

the point, you will suffer his Lordship to submit a few observations on

it to your consideration."

I received the Edinburgh paper which you sent me. Silly and spiteful as

it is, there is a little truth in it. In such cases I always remember

those excellent lines of Boileau

"Moi, qu'une humeur trop libre, un esprit peu soumis,

De bonne heure a pourvo d'utiles ennemis,

Je dois plus a leur haine (il faut que je l'avoue)

Qu'au faible et vain talent dont la France me loue.

Sitot que sur un vice un pensent me confondre,

C'est en me guerissant que je sais leur repondre."

This place disagrees so much with me that I shall leave it as soon as

the dispersion of the circuit commences,--that is, after the delivery

of the last batch of briefs; always supposing, which may be supposed

without much risk of mistake, that there are none for me.

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. M.

It was about this period that the Cambridge Senate came to a resolution

to petition against the Catholic Claims. The minority demanded a poll,

and conveyed a hint to their friends in London. Macaulay, with one or

two more to help him, beat up the Inns of Court for recruits, chartered

a stage-coach, packed it inside and out with young Whig Masters of Arts,

and drove up King's Parade just in time to turn the scale in favour of

Emancipation. The whole party dined in triumph at Trinity, and got back

to town the same evening; and the Tory journalists were emphatic in

their indignation at the deliberate opinion of the University having

been overridden by a coachful of "godless and briefless barristers."

Court House, Pomfret: April 15, 1828.

My dear Mother,--I address this epistle to you as the least undeserving

of a very undeserving family. You, I think, have sent me one letter

since I left London. I have nothing here to do but to write letters;

and, what is not very often the case, I have members of Parliament in

abundance to frank them, and abundance of matter to fill them with. My

Edinburgh expedition has given me so much to say that, unless I write

off some of it before I come home, I shall talk you all to death, and be

voted a bore in every house which I visit. I will commence with Jeffrey

himself. I had almost forgotten his person; and, indeed, I should not

wonder if even now I were to forget it again. He has twenty faces almost

as unlike each other as my father's to Mr. Wilberforce's, and infinitely

more unlike to each other than those of near relatives often are;

infinitely more unlike, for example, than those of the two Grants. When

absolutely quiescent, reading a paper, or hearing a conversation in

which he takes no interest, his countenance shows no indication

whatever of intellectual superiority of any kind. But as soon as he is

interested, and opens his eyes upon you, the change is like magic.

There is a flash in his glance, a violent contortion in his frown, an

exquisite humour in his sneer, and a sweetness and brilliancy in his

smile, beyond anything that ever I witnessed. A person who had seen him

in only one state would not know him if he saw him in another. For

he has not, like Brougham, marked features which in all moods of mind

remain unaltered. The mere outline of his face is insignificant. The

expression is everything; and such power and variety of expression

I never saw in any human countenance, not even in that of the most

celebrated actors. I can conceive that Garrick may have been like him.

I have seen several pictures of Garrick, none resembling another, and I

have heard Hannah More speak of the extraordinary variety of countenance

by which he was distinguished, and of the unequalled radiance and

penetration of his eye. The voice and delivery of Jeffrey resemble his

face. He possesses considerable power of mimicry, and rarely tells a

story without imitating several different accents. His familiar tone,

his declamatory tone, and his pathetic tone are quite different things.

Sometimes Scotch predominates in his pronunciation; sometimes it is

imperceptible. Sometimes his utterance is snappish and quick to the last

degree; sometimes it is remarkable for rotundity and mellowness. I can

easily conceive that two people who had seen him on different days might

dispute about him as the travellers in the fable disputed about the

chameleon.

In one thing, as far as I observed, he is always the same and that is

the warmth of his domestic affections. Neither Mr. Wilberforce, nor

my uncle Babington, come up to him in this respect. The flow of his

kindness is quite inexhaustible. Not five minutes pass without some fond

expression, or caressing gesture, to his wife or his daughter. He has

fitted up a study for himself; but he never goes into it. Law papers,

reviews, whatever he has to write, he writes in the drawing-room, or

in his wife's boudoir. When he goes to other parts of the country on a

retainer he takes them in the carriage with him. I do not wonder that

he should be a good husband, for his wife is a very amiable woman. But I

was surprised to see a man so keen and sarcastic, so much of a scoffer,

pouring himself out with such simplicity and tenderness in all sorts of

affectionate nonsense. Through our whole journey to Perth he kept up

a sort of mock quarrel with his daughter; attacked her about

novel-reading, laughed her into a pet, kissed her out of it, and laughed

her into it again. She and her mother absolutely idolise him, and I do

not wonder at it.

His conversation is very much like his countenance and his voice, of

immense variety; sometimes plain and unpretending even to flatness;

sometimes whimsically brilliant and rhetorical almost beyond the license

of private discourse. He has many interesting anecdotes, and tells them

very well. He is a shrewd observer; and so fastidious that I am not

surprised at the awe in which many people seem to stand when in his

company. Though not altogether free from affectation himself, he has

a peculiar loathing for it in other people, and a great talent for

discovering and exposing it. He has a particular contempt, in which

I most heartily concur with him, for the fadaises of bluestocking

literature, for the mutual flatteries of coteries, the handing about

of vers de societe, the albums, the conversaziones, and all the other

nauseous trickeries of the Sewards, Hayleys, and Sothebys. I am not

quite sure that he has escaped the opposite extreme, and that he is not

a little too desirous to appear rather a man of the world, an active

lawyer, or an easy careless gentleman, than a distinguished writer. I

must own that, when Jeffrey and I were by ourselves, he talked much and

very well on literary topics. His kindness and hospitality to me were,

indeed, beyond description, and his wife was as pleasant and friendly as

possible. I liked everything but the hours. We were never up till ten,

and never retired till two hours at least after midnight. Jeffrey,

indeed, never goes to bed till sleep comes on him overpoweringly, and

never rises till forced up by business or hunger. He is extremely

well in health; so that I could not help suspecting him of being very

hypochondriac; for all his late letters to me have been filled with

lamentations about his various maladies. His wife told me, when I

congratulated her on his recovery, that I must not absolutely rely on

all his accounts of his own diseases. I really think that he is, on the

whole, the youngest-looking man of fifty that I know, at least when he

is animated.

His house is magnificent. It is in Moray Place, the newest pile of

buildings in the town, looking out to the Forth on one side, and to a

green garden on the other. It is really equal to the houses in Grosvenor

Square. Fine, however, as is the new quarter of Edinburgh, I decidedly

prefer the Old Town. There is nothing like it in the island. You have

been there, but you have not seen the town, and no lady ever sees a

town. It is only by walking on foot through all corners at all hours

that cities can be really studied to good purpose. There is a new pillar

to the memory of Lord Melville; very elegant, and very much better than

the man deserved. His statue is at the top, with a wreath on the head

very like a nightcap drawn over the eyes. It is impossible to look at

it without being reminded of the fate which the original most richly

merited. But my letter will overflow even the ample limits of a frank,

if I do not conclude. I hope that you will be properly penitent for

neglecting such a correspondent when you receive so long a dispatch,

written amidst the bellowing of justices, lawyers, criers, witnesses,

prisoners, and prisoners' wives and mothers.

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. M.

Lancaster: March 24, 1829.

My dear Father,--A single line to say that I am at Lancaster. Where you

all are I have not the very slightest notion. Pray let me hear. That

dispersion of the Gentiles which our friends the prophets foretell seems

to have commenced with our family.

Everything here is going on in the common routine. The only things of

peculiar interest are those which we get from the London papers. All

minds seem to be perfectly made up as to the certainty of Catholic

Emancipation having come at last. The feeling of approbation among the

barristers is all but unanimous. The quiet townspeople here, as far as I

can see, are very well contented. As soon as I arrived I was asked by

my landlady how things had gone. I told her the division, which I had

learned from Brougham at Garstang. She seemed surprised at the majority.

I asked her if she was against the measure. "No; she only wished

that all Christians would live in peace and charity together." A very

sensible speech, and better than one at least of the members for the

county ever made in his life.

I implore you above everything, my dear Father, to keep up your health

and spirits. Come what may, the conveniences of life, independence,

our personal respectability, and the exercise of the intellect and the

affections, we are almost certain of retaining; and everything else is a

mere superfluity, to be enjoyed, but not to be missed. But I ought to be

ashamed of reading you a lecture on qualities which you are so much more

competent to teach than myself.

Ever yours very affectionately

T. B. M.

To Macvey Napier, Esq.

50 Great Ormond Street, London:

January 25, 1830.

My dear Sir,--I send off by the mail of to-day an article on

Southey,--too long, I fear, to meet your wishes, but as short as I could

make it.

There were, by the bye, in my last article a few omissions made, of no

great consequence in themselves; the longest, I think, a paragraph of

twelve or fourteen lines. I should scarcely have thought this worth

mentioning, as it certainly by no means exceeds the limits of that

editorial prerogative which I most willingly recognise, but that the

omissions seemed to me, and to one or two persons who had seen the

article in its original state, to be made on a principle which,

however sound in itself, does not I think apply to compositions of this

description. The passages omitted were the most pointed and ornamented

sentences in the review. Now, for high and grave works, a history for

example, or a system of political or moral philosophy, Doctor Johnson's

rule,--that every sentence which the writer thinks fine ought to be cut

out,--is excellent. But periodical works like ours, which unless they

strike at the first reading are not likely to strike at all, whose whole

life is a month or two, may, I think, be allowed to be sometimes even

viciously florid. Probably, in estimating the real value of any tinsel

which I may put upon my articles, you and I should not materially

differ. But it is not by his own taste, but by the taste of the fish,

that the angler is determined in his choice of bait.

Perhaps after all I am ascribing to system what is mere accident. Be

assured, at all events, that what I have said is said in perfect good

humour, and indicates no mutinous disposition.

The Jews are about to petition Parliament for relief from the absurd

restrictions which lie on them,--the last relique of the old system of

intolerance. I have been applied to by some of them in the name of the

managers of the scheme to write for them in the Edinburgh Review. I

would gladly further a cause so good, and you, I think, could have no

objection.

Ever yours truly

T. B. MACAULAY.

Bowood: February 20, 1830.

My dear Father,--I am here in a very nice room, with perfect liberty,

and a splendid library at my command. It seems to be thought desirable

that I should stay in the neighbourhood, and pay my compliments to my

future constituents every other day.

The house is splendid and elegant, yet more remarkable for comfort

than for either elegance or splendour. I never saw any great place so

thoroughly desirable for a residence. Lord Kerry tells me that his uncle

left everything in ruin,--trees cut down, and rooms unfurnished,--and

sold the library, which was extremely fine. Every book and picture in

Bowood has been bought by the present Lord, and certainly the collection

does him great honour.

I am glad that I stayed here. A burgess of some influence, who, at

the last election, attempted to get up an opposition to the Lansdowne

interest, has just arrived. I called on him this morning, and, though

he was a little ungracious at first, succeeded in obtaining his promise.

Without him, indeed, my return would have been secure; but both from

motives of interest and from a sense of gratitude I think it best to

leave nothing undone which may tend to keep Lord Lansdowne's influence

here unimpaired against future elections.

Lord Kerry seems to me to be going on well. He has been in very good

condition, he says, this week; and hopes to be at the election, and at

the subsequent dinner. I do not know when I have taken so much to so

young a man. In general my intimacies have been with my seniors;

but Lord Kerry is really quite a favourite of mine,--kind, lively,

intelligent, modest, with the gentle manners which indicate a long

intimacy with the best society, and yet without the least affectation.

We have oceans of beer, and mountains of potatoes, for dinner. Indeed,

Lady Lansdowne drank beer most heartily on the only day which she passed

with us, and, when I told her laughing that she set me at ease on a

point which had given me much trouble, she said that she would never

suffer any dandy novelist to rob her of her beer or her cheese.

The question between law and politics is a momentous one. As far as I am

myself concerned, I should not hesitate; but the interest of my family

is also to be considered. We shall see, however, before long what my

chance of success as a public man may prove to be. At present it would

clearly be wrong in me to show any disposition to quit my profession.

I hope that you will be on your guard as to what you may say to Brougham

about this business. He is so angry at it that he cannot keep his anger

to himself. I know that he has blamed Lord Lansdowne in the robing-room

of the Court of King's Bench. The seat ought, he says, to have been

given to another man. If he means Denman, I can forgive, and even

respect him, for the feeling which he entertains.

Believe me ever yours most affectionately

T. B. M.